Posted
by
samzenpuson Thursday September 27, 2007 @02:20AM
from the I-can-speed-every-tuesday dept.

PhoenixOr writes "New Zealand is now on the top of my list for cool governments. They've opened a wiki allowing the populace to craft a new version of their Police Act, the legislative basis for policing in New Zealand."

Now if only this would catch on... we might actually see laws that are representative of what the people want instead of some asshole with a few hundred thousand dollars more than they should have in their pocket.

I don't think we would see to many of those laws. The final draft will be reviewed by a relevant body before submitting it for approval. Not doing so would be insane, as all manner of abuse could find their way into the law otherwise. The thing is, it will be reviewed by those same people that we are supposing take "financial aids" from interest groups. So they will just snip out whatever doesn't suit their agendas.

I know this is a police law, but think of the possibilities in other areas. What if I want to expand the definition of Fair Use? Or if I want to shorten copyright duration? Do you see those amends surviving even on the face of overwhelming public support on the wiki? On top of lobbyists there would be astroturfers for one thing. And let's not forget that usually the only people that are vocal about something are those with a vested interest. I wouldn't want the nosy bastards from some retarded Home-Owners association slipping in some ordinances that would, for example, prevent me from installing a solar array on my backyard because it "ruins the aesthetics of the neighborhood" or such. Particularly if I don't even live on their area but get covered by this laws.

I think is a good publicity stunt and it may even generate some novel ideas, but I just don't see it suddenly making sense of the legal landscape in any meaningful way. I'd much rather they put the existing laws in a database with strong referential integrity. That would be interesting.

Now if only this would catch on... we might actually see laws that are representative of what the people want

At least, those who have and know how to use an internet connection, so you get a bias there. From what I've seen, there's far too much libertarianism to get a balanced and democratic decisions (no offense intended to libertarians out there).

And the process seems nevertheless a little too democratic, if you know what I mean. Would the people be able to know the ins and outs of creating a law? Would t

Not so fast. They've set the wiki up with a rather short-sighted password policy: any editor can set a password on any page that can protect that page from being edited or even being seen by anyone else. I'm having difficulty finding any pages that don't have passwords set...

"any editor can set a password on any page that can protect that page from being edited"

Very cool, a law wiki. Now what law do I want to create?... I know, how about making it illegal to walk forwards on a Thursday. Anyone breaking this law, will be locked in stocks and flogged to death, with custard coated kippers.

Very cool, a law wiki. Now what law do I want to create?... I know, how about making it illegal to walk forwards on a Thursday. Anyone breaking this law, will be locked in stocks and flogged to death, with custard coated kippers.

From the wiki's homepage:

On this site, wiki technology is paired with ongoing work to develop a Policing Act in 2008.

An official Bill is currently being written-up by parliamentary drafters, but in parallel there's an opportunity for others to suggest how a new Policing Act might

Hating your government for no good reason is nearly as silly as loving it on the same basis. I would say one should be rationally engaged and emotionally disinterested in their government unless and until that government unduly interferes in your life or perpetrates some act you consider to be unjust.

I agree, I live in wellington. There is yet, nothing cool about using a wiki for our overdue update to the police act.This is just an extra piece of fluff to go with the announcement of the new cyber-crime lab.I wonder, did they also use green matrices and smoke effects to herald this new initiative?

However, if this is the start to allow citizens to write their opinions on forthcoming and existing laws, I'm in favor.

However, if this is the start to allow citizens to write their opinions on forthcoming and existing laws, I'm in favor.

Here in the UK, the Government lets citizens write their opinions through "consultations" (either submitting to an email address, or an online forum).

However, the problem is the Government then ignores anything said. Or rather, when people reply in support, it claims it's doing what people want; when people criticise, it ignores them and still claims it's doing what people want.

This was a science fiction story in which anyone could create a law. The visitor from Earth created a law saying that only qualified people could create new laws, arguing that otherwise someone might create a stupid one. The native said "Someone just did, in fact". The revert happened almost immediately, and the visitor was advised not to start a revert war: the reverter was described as "very good with the ritual sword".

I think having the community develop laws together is a rather superb way of handling society. The more people, (generally) the better (IMO). The more people that have their hand in this, the less likely something will be left out. Also, since everyone in that society will have to live with those laws, I think it's best that the majority has the opportunity to shape those laws (granted, not everyone will likely use this wiki, but I think the concept is good).

Doing it this way, the way I see it, has the potential to mend gaps between people groups in a society by allowing them to discuss their ideas and explain and collaborate their ideas carefully.

I wish more governments could be run this way -- moreso by the people.

I don't know about ruling out Maori people from the net. Let's face it, it's usually $2 for half an hour at a net cafe.Hell, even a really bad busker can make that in ten minutes on courtney place. (Less time in Auckland)Besides, it's not exclusively online. Just free online, otherwise you can buy a hard copy of the proposal and make a submission by freepost.

An official Bill is currently being written-up by parliamentary drafters, but in parallel there's an opportunity for others to suggest how a new Policing Act might look by contributing to a wiki Act.

OK, it's unrealistic to believe that New Zealand would let anyone write the law. That would lead to anarchy. However, what they're doing is trying to get people interested in the law-making process, and in the laws themselves by opening up this wiki. I can see a number of purposes this could serve:

Educational: teaches citizens about laws and law-making.

Political: by getting citizens involved in the process, they're more likely to support the new Act.

Police PR: gets citizens to think about policing in a new way and perhaps gain a new respect for the Police.

First. Tasers were not "withdrawn", the trial period ended and the results of said period are now being examined to determine if they should become a permanant fixture.Second. NZ Police are supposed to be an unarmed force (although I believe certain situations allow an officer to carry, they are fairly rare). One can only assume that the victim was directly threatening the life another officer and so the shooter had time to retrieve a firearm from the patrol car where it was secured.

... the talk page would be filled with the bloated corpses of editors who had died dueling about the proper spelling of "marijuana" and whether Anglicizing the word warranted the article being tagged as insensitive or having NPOV issues.

Right, it would never work in the USA. If only there was some [wikipedia.org] way [wikipedia.org] to get the word out [wikipedia.org] before we started doing it. Maybe even provide a way for people to use the internet for free [wikipedia.org] if they don't have access at home. Then there's the apathy, why the hell would people care about having a say in the laws they'll be required to obey?

Way too impractical for the US. Democracy is better off left in the capable hands of our trustworthy and honorable representatives in Washington.

Wikipedia has some VERY serious flaws. For example, it is too vulnerable to vandalism, even though that vandalism is often easily fixable... if anyone happens to notice it in a timely manner.

There are other flaws as well. From my own participation, for example, I have found that often certain groups of people will "take over" a topic as "their own", and interfere with input from outside sources, however valid that input may be. In some ways this is analogous to problems we see today with "peer review" in scientific journals.

Wikipedia would be a disastrous model for anything having to do with government. It relies too much on the "good nature" of contributors. As we see very often, some people simply don't have any. And that is double true when it comes to government.

As pointed out elsewhere, the people who would participate are too self-selecting. They would just be too small a segment of the U.S. population.

Which is, of course, a significant change from the current state of affairs. After all, we have such a broad range of people participating in the government today, and we'd hate to do anything to upset the balance.

Seriously, though, the problem isn't that we'd get a narrow group of participants, because we already have a lot of that at the moment. At the ver

News Flash
Last week all members of New Zealand Police force "on the beat" exclusively consisted of women, wearing erotic bras and thongs. It is believed this is related with the extreme democracy and an Internet phenomenon called the "Slashdot effect".

It does work in cases where people don't care. Sounds silly, I know, but that's how it is. It will only work for laws people don't feel strongly about. Or laws that only one side (pro or con) feels strongly about and the rest doesn't care.

Take the US and imagine a system like that. Now, take a law about subsidies for agriculture for example. Will it pass? Certainly. The farmers are the only ones who care about it. Do I care? No.

Now take a law about capital punishment, gay marriage or abortion. Then grab popcorn and watch the editwars.

I think that where every 10/20 years the whole law book gets reviewed. Anything not entirely relevant gets removed so as to streamline the whole legal process. Most legal systems are full of laws that go back several hundred years and never get called on these days. If you don't see people herding sheep over london bridge its got nothing to do with the fact it's against the law, its just that there is no need to any more.
Rather than the typical knee jerk reactions to some current event, a constantly ev

The only drawback is every few hundred years you need a lot of bloodshed sopeople remember why it was started and what it means. It would help immenselyif they would let kids know about this in school.

Opening a wiki for creating laws is insane. It would just invite vandalism, and instead of leading to formation of new laws, it would waste money and manpower involved in maintanence and moderation.

Yeah. I heard that someone also had a wiki to build an encyclopedia, but that's just as insane. It would just invite vandalism, and instead of leading to an informative and complete reference, it would waste money and manpower involved in maintanence and moderation.

Well I second that. I see no reason why the new technologies cannot help democracy to return to its roots i.e. everybody could and should take part in decision process. Just in case people forgot: partof decision making is discussion on available options, methods and leadership among other things.Of course size matters here so the state organisations (big) cannot have their daily life led by democracy but the goals, the way to achieve them and the leadership that leads us there should be decided in a proces

I don't care whether its the police or the Aqua Teen Hunger Force but somebody needs to do something about the elephants who keep trampling my sheep. You know their numbers have doubled in the last 6 months.

Democracy corresponds to elected officials setting law. Communism is a great many things, it is a social and an economic model first and foremost, but communism, as opposed to social democracy, is the idea that the sum [or a random selection, similar to a jury] of the population set government policy.

Communism is a great many things, it is a social and an economic model first and foremost, but communism, as opposed to social democracy, is the idea that the sum [or a random selection, similar to a jury] of the population set government policy.

No, please, I asked you to get your facts straight.

There's difference between the way most communistic countries developed in practice, the way it's described by ideologists, and the way it's described to the citizens in the the propaganda communist governments spre

The problem is the American definition of "Communist countries". It tends to include places like China and Cuba. They are a better approximation than the USA, of course, but are still hardly communist.

*Ping* give Verte a coconut. The Cuban revolution in particular was never an ideologically Communist-led event. While Castro's intent most certainly did have an element of removal of the externally imposed landowners and distribution of their assets to the people, this is more popularism than pure Communism. C

Besides, there just haven't been enough communist countries for later ones to learn from negative experience of their predecesors. I hear first slave rebellions did not end well and first capitalist countries inflicted unspeakable human right abuse as well as killing their own economy with overproduction crisis.

Exactly. It is understandable why people often gets these facts wrong since all (practically) communist governments in the world have been dictatorships in one form or another. But it must be noted that communism in itself does not exclude democracy. Democracy means that the majority rules. In the original democracies, not all people were allowed to vote (only the people who turned up for the meetings, excluding slaves and women, of course).

Is it possible for Chinese people to vote no confidence in the ruling party?

Possibly, but who would they be replaced with?:-P

Let me clarify that I'm not an advocate of the Chinese government and make it clear that I don't think they are actually democratic. What I'm saying is that the democracy that Plato once laid down the rules for looks very different from our modern day definition and that there are many totalitarian regimes in the world that claim to be democratic. See the wikipedia page about democ

Communism is NOT a social or Economic Model.Socialism is an economic model.

Communism is a form of Government where there is only one party allowed to participate and there is supposed to a good deal of healthy debate on who should be allowed to stand in elections.Communism also holds regular elections. The candidates are nominated by the Party and the people have a choice voting Yes or NO for the candidate. If NO, then the Party has to send another candidate to stand.This forces the Party to listen to peopl

Communism will be an "extreme democracy" the day fascism will be a "benevolent dictatorship".

Isn't that day today? And yesterday, and the day before? "Benevolent Dictatorships" are exactly how fascism thrives. Keeping the trains running on time, building freeways, holding the Superbowl - that kind of thing. Without the bread and circuses, the fascists wouldn't remain in power so easily.

Communism will be, the day fascism will be a "benevolent dictatorship".

We have never and will never see it, so we know nothing. I didn't mean to come off as trolling, and I'm surprised I haven't been modded down for it yet. Because, just like the idealism that is communism, we will never see governments really listening. Much like we can complain about all the wonderfully simple things microsoft or intel could have done for us -their interest is not primarily to serve their customers, we are just lucky,

Populism is a system of rule with a primary interest in the people, though it does not describe means. Arguably, this makes all democracies populist. It runs tangent to everyone being able to have influence on government, but they are not equivalent. For example, businesses could have input to open fora on public policy [populism does not contain common rule], or a government could push agenda that is popular on the surface, but people do not know about since there is no open forum [common rule does not con

Umm, no. We don't have a president. That would require a mature attitude to politics:-)We are a realm of the commonwealth, basically the Governor-General looks after us on behalf of the Queen.We only get to elect Parliament, local government and health boards.

However, I would agree that the masses (Auckland) and the Rest Of New Zealand (RONZ) know better than politicians.

I've thought this over myself, but it wouldn't work: The problem with that is, that not everyone can keep track of *all bills*.
If all bills are passed online, in a forum, I only would have an hour of "free time" a day to spend reading and voting on those bills. As a result the process isn't entirely representative for a certain demography.

People who do have alot of time on their hands and are interested to spend that time on reading and voting on bills would be able to put more weight to their views, whi

New Zealand follows the German MMP system. We have one house of representatives. We will have 121 Seats unless there is another overhang next year. About half are directly elected, of which 7 are Maori seats. The rest are list seats allocated by putting in party nominees according to their share after counting what they won.So, to get represented in parliament, you either need to win : a general electorate, a maori electorate or 5% of the party votes.